"Yes, but who ever crosses it?" demanded the fireman. "Some one did two nights ago," insisted Ralph. "I'm positive that we just grazed a light wagon crossing the roadway leading into the cut." "Then it was some stray farmer lost off his route," declared Fogg. "Why, that old spur has been rusting away for over five years, to my recollection. As to the old road beyond being a highway, that's nonsense. There's no thoroughfare beyond the end of the spur. The road ends at a dismantled, abandoned old factory, and nobody lives anywhere in this section." "Is that so?" Toot! toot! toot! The whistle screeched out sharply. The fireman stuck his head out of the window. Ralph had already looked ahead. "I declare!" shouted Fogg, staring hard. "Swish--gone! But what was it we passed?" Ralph did not speak. He sat still in a queer kind of realization of what they both had just seen, and in the retrospect. While he and his fireman had been conversing, just ahead in the white moonlight he had seen two human figures against the sky. It was a flashing glimpse only, for the train was making a forty mile clip, but, dangling from a tree overhanging the side of the cliff lining the tracks on one side, he had made out two boys. "The Canaries!" he murmured to himself, in profound surprise and deep interest. "I even heard them whistle." Ralph was so sure that the little swinging figures he had seen were the lithe, strange creatures who had been brought to Stanley Junction by Zeph Dallas, that he thought about it all the rest of the trip. He said nothing further to Fogg about the circumstance, but he resolved to investigate later on. The young engineer tried to calculate ahead how some day soon he could arrange to visit the vicinity of the old Fordham spur. He was positive that he had seen the two Canaries. Their presence at the spur indicated that they must be denizens of its neighborhood. This being true, their presence might indicate the proximity of Zeph Dallas. At least the strange young foreigners might know what had become of the ardent young "detective." Ralph made a good many inquiries of his fireman as to the Fordham spur. Fogg simply knew that it ran to an old ruined factory long since abandoned. On the return trip Ralph kept a sharp lookout as they neared the cut. There was no second appearance of the Canaries, however, nor the next night, nor that following. The young engineer found no opportunity of visiting the place, but he kept his plan to do so constantly in mind. It was two days later as he made the short cut to the roundhouse about noon, that Ralph was greeted by a new discovery that fairly took his breath away. He had stepped aside to wait till a locomotive with one car attached passed the crossing. The peculiar oddness of the car at once attracted his attention.